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October 19, 2018

Russell Kirk’s 100th Birthday

I’d like to join in the chorus of Russell Kirk memorials that have graced the PowerBlog these past few days to commemorate Kirk’s 100th birthday. Over at The Federalist today, I can only hint at the significant contributions Kirk wrote on behalf of conservatism, sound economics and Christian humanism. Continue Reading...
October 17, 2018

The Spanish tradition of freedom in the 16th and 17th centuries

The following article is written by Angel Fernández Álvarez and translated by Joshua Gregor. This October 31, I will give a conference entitled The Spanish School of the XVI and XVII Centuries at Harvard University, in order to explain in detail the “institutional framework” and the principles of growth upheld by the late Spanish scholastics. Continue Reading...
October 17, 2018

Alexis de Tocqueville, socialism, and the American Way

Tocqueville determined that the one defining factor in the United States was equality of condition, says John Wilsey in this week’s Acton Commentary. Tocqueville noticed that Americans apparently had the singular ability to prevent equality of conditions from yielding democratic despotism. Continue Reading...
October 17, 2018

The political manipulation of religion

The fact that something is political does not mean that it is not religious, says Paul Marshall. Instead of describing something as political, not religious, we might should describe it as the political manipulation of religion, or the insincere use of religion: This stress that events are not religion but politics can lead to misunderstanding the nature of both religion and politics. Continue Reading...
October 17, 2018

Review: Bradley Birzer’s Russell Kirk biography invites us to reconsider conservatism

This is the fifth in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the series here. During the twentieth century, one man in particular took it upon himself to make a project of defining and perhaps re-invigorating an American conservatism which the prominent cultural critic Lionel Trilling dismissed as “a series of irritable mental gestures.” Continue Reading...